National Network for Equitable Library Service

Purdy Crawford’s name is synonymous with Canadian business and law. But even after education at Mount Allison and Harvard, Purdy arrived on Toronto’s Bay Street as an outsider, the son of a coal miner from tiny Five Islands, Nova Scotia. So how did young Purdy ascend so quickly and so far to become one of Canada’s top lawyers and best-known business mentors? In this biography of Purdy, bestselling business writer Gordon Pitts begins with the moment in 2007 when Crawford was enlisted by some of the country’s leading corporate officials to stave off financial market catastrophe.

Black Loyalists is an attempt to present hard data about the lives of Nova Scotia Black Loyalists before they escaped slavery in early South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and after they settled in Nova Scotia—to bring back into our awareness the context for some very brave and enterprising men and women who survived the chaos of the American Revolution, people who found a way to pass through the heart, ironically, of a War for Liberty, to liberty and human dignity.

Eco-Innovators profiles some of the region's most innovative and forward-thinking leaders in sustainability. These entrepreneurs and educators, activists and agitators, farmers and fishers have all made measurable contributions both in their respective fields of interest and in motivating others to make change. In the book, we meet Kim Thompson, a strawbale builder and consultant, who has recently brought her building experience to a renovation of an older house in downtown Halifax.

He cast himself as the ultimate insider, Parliament Hill’s man in the know. It made him a household name and one of the Canada’s best­paid journalists. But Duffy wanted to get even closer and lobbied his way into the Canadian Senate, with dire results. Veteran journalist Dan Leger tells the story of Duffy’s rise to the top in Canadian media, his entanglement with the Harper Conservatives, and the scandal that made him one of the most controversial figures in contemporary politics.

Fred Doucette always wanted to be a soldier. In the 1960s he joined the Canadian Armed Forces and served in Cyprus in the 1970s and ’80s and Bosnia in the 1990s. When he returned home to New Brunswick in 1999 after his last overseas tour, he was diagnosed with severe chronic post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sara Jewell has collected lots of addresses--eighteen in total--including four in Vancouver, British Columbia, and three in her hometown of Cobourg, Ontario. But there was one address that always remained constant: Pugwash Point Road in rural Nova Scotia. She was nine years old the first time her family vacationed in the small fishing village about an hour from the New Brunswick border, and the red soil stained her heart. Life, as it's wont to do, eventually took Jewell away from the east coast.

Imagine receiving a mysterious invitation from Charlie Chaplin, doing jigsaw puzzles with Marilyn Monroe, having a heart-to-heart with Jack Kennedy, or being kissed by Greta Garbo. All of these and more are the sensational memories of UK-born, honorary Maritimer Charles Foster. After an unlikely childhood, his adventurous spirit brought him in 1943 to RAF pilot training school in Calgary. Through a series of incredible circumstances and fortunate friendships, Foster went on to become a Hollywood writer and publicist.

Bryant Freeman was born by a river, and the sound of roaring water was both magical and constant. For the rest of his life, Freeman, an icon in the New Brunswick fly-fishing community, would be drawn to the outdoors, and, invariably, rivers. Freeman has been honoured for his many contributions to fly tying and the conservation of Atlantic salmon and his specialty fly shop, Eskape Anglers in Riverview, New Brunswick, has been a destination for decades, a gathering place for tyers and anglers.

The final chaotic season of Codco had just wrapped when Mary Walsh sat down at a Toronto bistro with George Anthony, then creative head of CBC TV's arts programming. She'd been thinking about a news-based comedy show--did he think that would fly? He did. That was the early '90s. Twenty-five seasons later, hundreds of thousands of Canadians continue to tune in weekly to This Hour Has 22 Minutes for its unashamedly Canadian, biting satirical take on politics and power.

In this narrative history and memoir, journalist, musician, and Monctonian Jason Murray follows the rise of the band that put the Maritimes on the map.Eric's Trip was a band defined as much by its DIY ethos as its low-fi, discordant music. The four-piece formed in an early-'90s Moncton basement and in a few short years, went from recording themselves on a four-track and selling cassettes at local record stores to signing on Seattle's Sub Pop records, opening for Sonic Youth, and touring internationally.